Ep 227: The Importance of 'Seriousness,' or Why Palestinians Can't Be Witness to Their Own Genocide (Part II)
Release Date: 08/13/2025
Ep 234: TikTok, Gen Z's Move to Social Media and Elite Panic Over Unsanctioned News
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In this episode, we examine our political class' TikTok neurosis, how Gaza fueled its sell to US and Israeli military contractors, and the long history of elite panics around unsanctioned information flows. With guest Omar Zahzah.
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News Brief: ICE, Senate Dems' Counterinsurgency PR, and the Limits of Body Cam Liberalism
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In this News Brief, we detail the fundamental problems with Senate Democrats' cosmetic reforms, the strategy of letting outrage blow over and the conspicuous absence of any proposal that touches ICE's obscene budget.
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Ep 233: How US Media Naturalizes Capital Strikes and Helps the Rich Undermine Democracy
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In this episode, we examine how billionaires and corporations threatening capital strikes and capital flight to discipline populist politicians and movements is treated as normal, obvious, and healthy by US media.
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News Brief: As Dem Leadership Waffles—Labor, Organizers, Immigrants Fight Back in Minneapolis
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In this News Brief, we break down Dem leadership's fatuous "body cam" and "training" response to ICE brutality, and how organizers in the Twin Cities are not settling for cosmetic reform. With guest Janette Corcelius.
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News Brief: For Media Reporting on Iran, Trump Suddenly Morphs into Pro-Democracy Humanitarian
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In this News Brief, we discuss mainstream media coverage of ongoing protests across Iran and how nearly every major Western outlet has been uncritically framing any potential regime change plans by the US government—including Trump ordering a military attack on the country—as being motivated primarily, if not solely, by concern for the lives, safety and rights of demonstrators.
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News Brief: How Corporate Media Laid the Groundwork for a Rightwing Incitement Campaign in Minnesota
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In this News Brief, we detail how CBS, Fox, WSJ, and NYT promoted an essentialized, overblown narrative on the "Somali Minnesota fraud" story, teeing up a full blown rightwing incitement campaign against Minneapolis's immigrant communities.
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Ep 232: US Meddling, the Limits of 'Agency' Discourse and How Media Chooses Which 'Voices' To Center
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In this episode, we discuss the uses and misuses of liberal standpoint theory to promote US meddling, sanctions, and bombing. With guest Vincent Bevins.
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News Brief: BBC's Gaza Double Standard and Western Liberalism's Crisis of Legitimacy
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In this News Brief, we interview journalist Daniel Trilling and discuss his investigation into the BBC's systemic anti-Palestinian bias.
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Ep 231 - How To Oppose Genocide Without Opposing Genocide (Part 2): AIPAC Dems' Fake Israel Criticisms
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In this episode, we detail the buyers' market for superficial Gaza critiques that permit ambitious Democrats to look pro-Palestine without the downside of actually being so. With guest Tariq Kenney-Shawa.
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Ep 230 - How To Oppose Genocide Without Opposing Genocide (Part 1): Biden World's Reputation Laundering PR Tour
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In this episode, we detail recent attempts by former Biden officials to rewrite history and absolve themselves of responsibility for the horrors of Gaza, and lay out the emerging Dem-aligned media industry of vibing past Democrats' lockstep support for genocide.
info_outline"Exclusive Look at Life in War-Ravaged Gaza," reads the title for a CNN interview with correspondent Clarissa Ward. "'It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid," report Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg for Ha'aretz. "I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It," argues Omer Bartov in The New York Times.
These stories have something in common: they’re vital pieces of journalism about Gaza, or Palestine more broadly, published in Western and Western-aligned outlets. This is, obviously, important. Reporting like this keeps Western audiences informed about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, fortifies sympathetic Westerners’ solidarity with Palestine, and serves as an essential counter to the pro-Israel PR machine powering so much other Western media coverage.
But while these pieces have made a splash among their audiences, in many cases, they’re building upon points that Palestinian journalists, writers, and activists had been making weeks, months, even years before. So why is the reporting of Palestinian journalists–especially their reporting on what’s happening within their own country and cities–so often ignored, only to be heeded after it gets the Western stamp of approval?
On this episode — our Season 8 finale and also the second part of our two-part series on “The Importance of Seriousness, or Why Palestinians Can’t Be Witness to Their Own Genocide” — we explore the discrepancies in the alleged credibility between Western and Israeli journalists and Palestinian and other Arab journalists, especially when it comes to reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza. We’ll look at how, by Western standards, journalists don’t build legitimacy by being correct, so much as by being in close proximity to the political and media establishments.
Our guest is writer and organizer Kaleem Hawa.